Sailing into sleep

I may have it wrong, but the America's Cup shootout between Team New Zealand and Alinghi seems only partly about sheer straight-line speed, and a good deal more about tactics and staying awake to your rival's moves. Trying to watch from the comfort of the couch, I've discovered this week, is not entirely dissimilar: it's a matter of staying awake and not making a straight line for bed.

Since the Government has chucked $30 million at the event, and TV One a whole heap of resources, it seemed a reasonable proposition to attempt a review of how television has covered this week's racing and the return we taxpayers are getting on our involuntary generosity (particularly as about the only other option this week was to take a slightly uneasy look at The Outlook - a new TV2 series about New Zealand's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual culture - and the bangs that offers for our bucks).

But even if you are able to feel the faintest twinge of patriotism for an entry called Emirates Team New Zealand, nationalistic pride goes only so far - about 10pm in my case. It takes a single-minded and determined will, a top sportsman's perhaps, to make it through the witching hour and on to the start of a match race being held around the other side of the world.

My record this week has been abysmal, and not just because of the ungodly hour that racing begins in Valencia. To be honest, I gave last Sunday morning's opening hit-out a miss in part because I'm a born pessimist and had an innate fear of another 5-0 whitewash at Alinghi's hands. Then - after the drubbing handed out by Ernesto's hired deckhands - the cynicism and negativity that are hallmarks of the journalist's trade also kicked in, and I'd mentally declared our cup challenge dead in the water and turned in well before Team New Zealand pounced on an Alinghi mistake to square the series.

But it's an ill-wind that blows nobody good, and by a curious stroke of luck on my part - and bad luck for the part of my son cut open by a wayward surfboard fin - I found myself wide awake in front of a plasma television for the build-up to race three on Tuesday night. However dull the America's Cup, it's infinitely preferable to watching a family member get multiple injections or have a drip inserted.

And so there was a larger-than-life John McBeth - I couldn't work out if age had filled him out in the face or it was the wide screen - profiling the respective crews and prattling on with a studio guest in between weather analyses and myriad crosses to the likes of Martin Tasker and Peter Montgomery in sunny Spain. But with a lack of wind delaying a start it was arguable which was the more slow-moving - the cup coverage or A & E - and by my third trip back out to the waiting room they'd talked themselves out and resorted to previous race footage.

Sometime in the wee hours I headed home, unaware great drama was finally unfolding on the water and that Dean Barker and crew were putting in an Emiratus performance to give Team New Zealand a 2-1 lead in the best-of-nine series. In the interests of getting some catch-up sleep and back on an even keel, I also missed seeing Alinghi square things up with trademark Swiss precision.

This weekend provides the chance for both me and Team New Zealand to make amends, with three consecutive nights of racing (including this morning's) scheduled. However drab the spectacle, it's still something of a rare treat these days to find live sport on free-to-air television. Here's hoping races five to seven are more exciting, at least, than watching iodine dry in a hospital cubicle.

- © Fairfax NZ News